Book #206: The Dark Tower

Book #206: The Dark Tower by Stephen King

August 29, 2015

I definitely intended to have this book finished sooner, though it is over 1,000 pages in the edition I read. But life happens. I had a family reunion in Colorado, and the very day after I got home, I was back to work. So I didn't quite accomplish my goal of finishing the series over summer break, but I came very close.

A lot happens in this last volume. The baby is born, and proceeds to eat Mia. It can change forms between a giant spider and a human, and this horrific distraction allows Susannah to get her hands on the gun and kill the low men and their associates...but Mordred gets away. It's not long before the ka-tet is reunited, and they have a couple of important things to do before heading on to the Dark Tower itself.

This could have easily been two books, so it's interesting that King, after taking his sweet time, blasted through to the end. This is actually built in as part of the narrative, as Jake sacrifices himself to save fictional Stephen King from being killed by the van. In return, this King stops hesitating and finishes the story for them, you assume.

I don't want to say too much (Jake's third death was foreshadowed so that shouldn't be a shock), but the ending devastated me. Ka is a wheel...Roland instilled this belief in his ka-tet, but he didn't see the truth. I'm left with so many questions about why he's doomed to his fate. Damn, poor Roland.

Though the ending makes me sad, I'm not dissatisfied. It's rather fitting, if unfair. Life and fate are so often unfair, so there it is. I absolutely loved this series. If this is what Stephen King considers to be his masterpiece, then I say he did a damn good job. And as to the rest of the beloved ka-tet, he's much kinder to them than any earlier comments of mine may have suggested, which softens the blow of Roland's reality a little bit but does raise further questions. 

I bet there are websites out there dedicated to theories and speculations about The Dark Tower series. I don't know that I'd delve into all that, though. I'm always about seeking a new reading experience...the world (in my mind) is moving on.

Book #205: Song of Susannah

Book #205: Song of Susannah by Stephen King

August 3, 2015

This is the sixth (and second-to-last) of The Dark Tower series. It's the lowest rated book in the series on Goodreads, but I personally liked it. The bulk of the controversy seems to stem from the fact that King includes himself as a character in this book. 

I don't know yet how effective King's inclusion in the story was. What's intriguing, though, is that this King is in another world very similar to this one, except that he dies in 1999, as he's in the middle of writing the series. One of the most significant and well-known events in King's life is that he was hit by a van that year. In real life, he recovered; he wrote about his experience a bit in On Writing, since he wrote it during this time. In Song of Susannah, he doesn't survive that accident. This will certainly affect the events in the final volume, since the ka-tet realizes that they are products of his imagination...or, at the very least, he's the vessel or messenger used to tell this story.

Well, it's not any more bizarre than anything else we've experienced in this series. It's meta, in a way. What is reality, anyway? "We could be in a turtle's dream, floating around in outer space." Or living in a universe that is balanced on a great turtle's shell. Eddie and the others have a bit of existential pondering when they realize they're characters...but what they experience is real and important to them. I sort of hope they get into this more in next (final!) book, though there's a lot of action going in.

Just a quick run-down of the events. The ka-tet gets help from the Manni to get through the door. Eddie is distraught when he and Roland end up in Maine in 1977 and Jake, Oy, and Callahan end up in New York in 1999 to find Susannah, but he soon realizes that ka played out that way for a reason. The story follows Susannah and Mia (Detta's around as well) as Susannah learns more about Mia; not a new personality, but a spirit send to inhabit her by the low men to bear the child that they intend to use to kill Roland. There's a lot going on there, and the main story ends as Susannah and Mia are going into labor. 

I appreciate this book for what it is: the set-up to the final volume. I intend to pick it up at the library today and get to it. I hope that the crew will all be reunited soon, because shit is getting more and more (un)real.